In 2015, Ridley Scott’s The Martian, an adaptation of the popular science fiction novel by Andy Weir, was released and was a huge hit in every sense of the word – critics loved it, it made money, and it won a bunch of awards. It only makes sense Hollywood would try to recreate that magic with another Andy Weir adaptation. Filmmaking team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, known for their string of successes, starting with 2014’s surprisingly great The Lego Movie, seemed like an odd choice to adapt another dense, lengthy, science-heavy Andy Weir novel. But recently, every critic I know has been talking about how amazing their film adaptation of his 2021 novel, Project Hail Mary, is. I entered the theater last night not totally convinced, despite literally everyone on my Letterboxd having rated the film at least a 4/5. The hype seemed too unbelievable, like it was too much to hope for. And maybe it’s good I was skeptical. The film I saw yesterday proved me wrong in every way. 

Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens from a medically induced coma in a spaceship with retrograde amnesia, unsure of how he got there. He slowly begins to remember the events that led him here. He was a middle school science teacher and biologist who was tapped by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), to embark on a one-way mission into space to discover a new planet with the capacity for human life, and save the world from near-certain catastrophe. While he’s up there, he encounters an alien from this new planet, whom he calls Rocky. Together, Dr. Grace and Rocky must learn how to communicate and work together to save life on both of their planets. 

I wanted to keep my expectations for Project Hail Mary at a limit, because it’s happened countless times where there’s a consensus of immeasurable, rhapsodic praise for a movie, and when I finally get to sit down and watch the film everyone has loved, I think, ‘that’s it?!’ That did not happen here. Project Hail Mary is everything everyone has said it is. It’s the best kind of blockbuster, a big-hearted adventure that dazzles and thrills, but leaves the viewer with a lot to think about on the drive home. It’s a gorgeous, whimsical, charming and thrilling piece of work that stirs the soul and the mind. And it even further solidifies Ryan Gosling as the movie star he’s alway been. But this didn’t just happen, a lot of factors at play here had to be working together juuuuust right, and i want to break all that down. 

First of all, for Ryan Gosling, who is also a producer on the film, the challenge of a role like this is similar to what Matt Damon had to do in The Martian, or what Sandra Bullock achieved in Gravity. It is mostly just Ryan Gosling for most of Project Hail Mary, most of the time acting opposite a CGI character. This would have to be incredibly challenging, and Gosling makes the whole thing look easy. He’s got an unmistakable charm, he’s proven that to audiences time and time again. He can make you laugh riotously and move you to tears, and good thing because if this whole thing is going to work, the actor in this role needs to do both. He needs to take you on this full and complete emotional journey, and I can’t imagine how badly this film could have failed if the star at the center was not doing all he needed to. 

I spent most of the film wondering who this female lead actress was. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. And then I realized, I’ve seen Sandra Hüller in at least four films, and I have not recognized her from film to film. She really came onto my radar with the one-two punch of Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, back in 2023. She’s got this chameleonic quality and she goes all in on the character every time. Her character seems incredibly cold and emotionally distant for the majority, but she has a standout scene in a karaoke bar (a scene featuring an all-timer of a needle drop), where all that she’s been doing emotionally comes to a head, and her performance is strong enough to leave a lasting impression on any viewer.

And the entire film doesn’t work if they don’t do Rocky justice. Rocky is the alien whom Grace befriends, and must learn to work with.  Fans of the book LOVE Rocky, and the depiction of this character is crucial. James Ortiz acts as the voice of Rocky, and the puppeteer bringing him to life. And it’s really quite amazing that Lord and Miller manage to make this CGI creation, which is essentially a pile of rocks without a face, who kind of resembles a friendlier version of the monsters from A Quiet Place, so charming and endearing. The viewer really needs to care about this relationship between Grace and Rocky, otherwise nothing else in this movie would work. And I’m only somewhat ashamed to admit this pile of rocks reduced me to tears at a few points over the course of this film.

There’s a lightness and an effervescence to the design of this film, yet a specificity that is evident the whole way through. Daniel Pemberton composed the score, and that score is doing a lot of work. It has to compliment what’s happening onscreen emotionally, while not telling the viewer how to feel about everything that happens. Pemberton strikes that balance perfectly. Greig Fraser is our cinematographer, and the film does something very cool with aspect ratios. I’ve seen it happen a lot where they shoot a blockbuster film, partially, with IMAX cameras, and in those scenes, the picture expands to fill the entire 1:85:1 screen, and usually it feels clunky and weird. In this film, it’s very clear that the scenes are not in the IMAX ratio, are flashbacks from before Dr. Grace embarks on this mission. They look more like memories, while what’s happening on the ship feels immediate. Striking that balance correctly couldn’t have been easy.

People feel very strongly about the Andy Weir novel this film is based on. In my theater yesterday, I was sandwiched between people who were talking to their companions about how amazing the book is, and how much this movie will mean to them. I haven’t read the book. I tried to read The Martian, but it was full of so much science mumbo jumbo that flew right over the head of a fool like me. I’m going to try to read Project Hail Mary (once my Libby reservation for the book arrives), because this film left such a strong impression on me. Drew Goddard, who I immediately know as the filmmaker behind 2012’s brilliant The Cabin in the Woods, but also penned the screenplay for The Martian, adapted Project Hail Mary as well. He seems to find the perfect balance of the nerd-brain scientific specificity, and also the emotionally charged and intensely thrilling human narrative. 

I could say Phil Lord and Christopher Miller make all of this look effortless, but that’s not even remotely true. So many factors had to be working in perfect tandem to achieve the emotional response Project Hail Mary is aiming for, and this is clearly a film with so much love and enthusiasm pulsing through its veins. It’s what you think of whenever you think whimsically about the magic of movies – it’s grand, extravagant and thrilling, but also recognizably human being-sized emotionally, and it really is the kind of thing wherein just about any viewer could find something to appreciate. I will say if there’s a problem, it’s that the film is a little long. Most of the two and a half hour runtime flies by, but the film doesn’t really get going until Dr. Grace meets Rocky. But from that point forward, the film is everything the filmmakers wanted it to be, technically and emotionally. It’s a heartfelt and life-affirming tribute to the importance of humanity, and all that means. And I think that’s something audiences desperately need right now.